There goes Elian"s freedom to think and act as an individual.

             I have heard many people say that Cuba is getting better. Human Rights conditions are improving. That"s not the case. Two months ago, the United Nations Human Rights Commission condemned Cuba, for the eighth time, for its systematic violation of human rights. Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department have done the same. Just this year, the Clinton Administration labeled Cuba as one of the world"s worst human rights violators and a "terrorist regime".

             Armando Valldares U.S., ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission from 1986-1990, spent 22 years in a Cuban prison for refusing to pledge allegiance to the Communist Regime. Armando has told a story about a 12-year-old boy named Robertico The boy was caught playing with a gun that he found in an opened political police captain"s car. "Robertico was sent to a galley with common criminals. Within a few days, those soulless prisoners raped him. He spent several days in the hospital for treatment of rents and hemorrhages as a result. By the time he was released, his file had been stamped "homosexual" and he was taken to the prison area reserved for this classification." The horror stories go on and on. It is no wonder why 20% of the Cuban population have risked their lives to flee the country.

             Elian"s reindoctrination into communist Cuba has already begun on U.S. soil. The Washington Times displayed pictures of the boy in the uniform of Cuba's communist youth Pioneers at the Wye Plantation in Maryland. According to a youth Pioneers manual kids are taught games such as "Bridge Attack," "Mine Layers," "Night Infiltration," "Eliminate the Sentry," "Coastal Infiltration," and "Throwing Grenades Through Windows." Martha Molina Puerto, a Cuban psychologist who fled Cuba in August 1999.

             Wrote that "This is one enormous apparatus around the child who lacks any freedom to express himself.